After 21 minutes and 47 seconds Björn Borg beats on July 5, 1980 a volley in the net. The most memorable tiebreak in the history of Wimbledon ended in favor of his final opponent.
John McEnroe is already in another sphere. At the end of the fourth set he just fought off seven match balls against the best lawn player of all time and won the tiebreak 18:16. With these rallies for eternity, the crowd let go of any British restraint and now raves like a rock concert instead of the venerable All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club.
"When the last point was played," John McEnroe said, "I had some kind of out-of-body experience, so I never had that kind of intense feeling again, that was the biggest moment of my life." He won the sentence. But not yet the match - the fight lasted for almost four hours and today is considered one of the biggest tennis games of all time.
At this time, McEnroe is 21 years old. Born in Wiesbaden, where McEnroe Senior was stationed as an Air Force soldier, the eldest of three sons grows up in New York's Queens district. The father is a lawyer who protects childhood, John develops early a special ball feeling. When the one-and-a-half-year old in Central Park hits a plastic ball with a tennis racket, a passerby asks her father, "Is that a little boy or a Lilliputian?"
The little boy makes later as a quarterback in football and as a football center forward a name, but tennis is even more. In 1971, as a ball boy at the US Open, he sees Björn Borg, who is only three years his senior. The prodigy leads the junior world ranking list at 15.
Volcano against iceberg
What impresses McEnroe the most: With his long hair, tight-fitting Fila clothes and the distinctive headband Borg thrilled the guys and makes the girls languish. At home in Queens, John-Boy hangs a poster of Sweden in the room.
Seven years later, they measure for the first time in the semi-finals of the Stockholm Open. Borg, long since a superstar, has won Wimbledon three times in a row, twice the French Open, still wearing the coolest clothes. "Ice-Borg" is his nickname because he dominates games and tournaments with almost uncanny self-restraint.
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John McEnroe: "You can not be serious!"Lockenkopf McEnroe acts like the complete opposite: a bubbling volcano, which can break out at any time - because of decisions of arbitration and linesman as well as coughing spectators or apparently unbearably loud directing instructions in headphones of cameramen.
In Wimbledon, the cursing foolhardy was particularly negative. In this epicenter of tennis philistine etiquette is more than a clean second serve. Sports reporter Ian Wooldrigde certifies the "charm of an Hitler Youth leader". And because McEnroe angered a pigeon fluttering under the roof of a stadium at a tournament, the "Daily Express" nicknamed him "SuperBrat" - super brat. So he is not even 20 years old already as Bad Boy decried the scene.
"You two look like pimples on a tree!"
And this evil boy defeats in front of the Swedish royal family, the blond superhero Borg, his idol, smooth in two sentences and in the end even win the tournament. In Stockholm Borg loses for the first time against a younger player. An eye-opener for John McEnroe: "I knew that if I could beat Borg then I could beat everyone else." In 1979 he wins the US Open against his buddy Vitas Gerulaitis and is the youngest winner of the tournament history.
Such a talented player has rarely seen this sport. The tennis balls are still being processed by wooden clubs, the game is slower than today, but more soulful and refined. McEnrose's sense of touch and his sensational reactions make him an unpredictable opponent.
Arthur Ashe, Wimbledon champion of 1975, says: "Borg always had the feeling that he was working on a sledgehammer while McEnroe was using a stiletto, putting a little bit of stitches in here, sometimes there, sometimes there, blood flowing everywhere Even if the wounds are not deep, and it will not be long before you bleed to death. "
As elegant as his blows, his behavior is radically uncouth. In the chic Boston Longwood Club he spits on a spectator who has clapped loudly after a double fault. At its first Wimbledon appearances, the BBC dims its place microphones - yet the audience hear things that have never been heard here ("you two look like pimples on a tree!").
"Titanic fight against tormenting self-doubt"
But for every outraged Buh-Rufer come at least two new fans. The boom of the early eighties owes the tennis and the zickereien the super-brat from Queens. Commenting on a McEnrea's "Daily Telegraph" article, one reader writes: "I find all his games on TV very entertaining, and that's more than I could say of his predecessors, who always fell asleep in front of the box."
As McEnroe says, "My behavior on the field has more to do with the way people live, it's an extremely frustrating game, and we all experience situations every day you want to roar." And in 1985 in a SPIEGEL interview: "I always want to play the perfect match, but because that does not work, I'm mad at myself."
His biographer sees "a perfection addiction that ordinary people do not understand". And no-one has literarily analyzed the legendary McEnroesches crannies as the award-winning Guardian journalist Tim Adams in his great tennis study "Being John McEnroe": "Every ball, even its soulfully played volleys, was in a sense the result of a titanic inner struggle against tormenting self-doubt."
The 1980 Wimbledon Final is a piece of sports history. After set four, the audience is ready to go from this unbelievable tiebreaker. "I've seen a lot," BBC commentator John Barrett says, "but never before." Tim Adams writes, "And now comes the moment that has to be among the most memorable in sports history ever."
Very big tennis
In the final sentence, Björn Borg seems to be walking calmly to the baseline; There is nothing to suggest that he has just won seven match points. And the Swedish iceberg wins this fifth set 8: 6, his last five serve games to zero. It's his fifth Wimbledon win in a row - after him, only Roger Federer (2003-2007) will succeed.
John McEnroe then becomes one of the most successful players of the eighties. He collects 77 titles in singles, 78 tournament victories in doubles. Especially his rabid charm and the unsparingly open fights with his own doubts and fears make him a tennis icon.
DISPLAY
Tim Adams:
Being John McEnroe
Matthias Fienbork
Berlin publishing house; 144 pages.
Order at Amazon.
In 1992 he finished his professional career as number 20 in the world and plays in 1994 as a wildcard participant again at the Rotterdam Open, but flies out in the first round. He made an astonishing comeback five years later, when he reached the mixed semifinals in Wimbledon with Steffi Graf, but can not compete, because Graf prefers to prepare for their individual finals.
And today? McEnroe is not a retiree: he still plays on the Seniors Tour, has a name as a tennis commentator, was Daviscup captain of the United States and has - with modest success - as a musician. On Saturday, John Patrick McEnroe Jr. turns 60. "To my great regret," he writes in his biography "Serious", I have never been able to show the world how much fun I had playing tennis. "
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